On The Pedals

By Jason Giacchino

Racing Revolution

Like so many of you out there, I find myself spending a good deal of time each month pouring over mountain bike magazines, literature, and web sites. While bike tests may initially capture my attention, I am reminded constantly of our sport’s racing heritage through event coverage, video streams, and race results pages. I’ve even had the pleasure of attending some national events that found their way close enough to my neighborhood be considered local. Nothing out of the ordinary so far, right? Not so fast. While relatively successful in bicycling circles, the mountain bike race situation is far from popular in terms of our society’s viewing as a whole. To seek evidence of this, look no further than the TV Guide page: Powersports, NASCAR, F1, Tour De France, even marathon running earns far more comprehensive TV coverage than any of the impressive Downhill events I’ve followed through magazine and web site reports throughout the year.

The most unfortunate aspect of mountain bike racing’s less than stellar popularity is that it fails to attract outside sponsorship. Sure, the bicycle manufacturers and aftermarket component brands throw what money they can spare into the race efforts but the real capital exists once Corporate America turns an interested eye in our direction. As is the case with NASCAR, outside sponsorship from the likes of laundry detergents, cellular phone companies, shopping centers, soft drink, and candy bar brands opens the floodgates to a river of working capital and a well needed boost of label recognition.

Racing plays an integral role to product development. Competition has a way of getting manufacturers to give it all they’ve got in terms of research and development. There is no motivator quite as powerful as bragging rights when a company’s reputation is on the line. As a consumer, we all benefit as advances in race equipment today trickle down to standard equipment on the bikes of tomorrow. A surge in mountain bike race interest would begin a ripple that would affect the upper echelons of the sport on all the way down to the beginner sitting on his first hardtail at the LBS.

It all has to begin somewhere, and while it is not my place to assign such duties, it is feasible that the media has the power to get the ball rolling. This is a generation addicted to flashy buzz words that follow the typical media package of presentation: “X-Games, freestyle, Gravity Games, vert ramps”. It isn’t hard to imagine some of the same marketing and positioning becoming effective tools for mountain bike racing to capture the attention of the masses.

From an unbiased perspective, mountain bike competition has all of the elements that make racing (of any kind) interesting: Speed, color, character, risk, crashes, incredible settings, landscapes, and terrain. What we presently lack are faces, champions, role models. Now before you find yourself preparing to fire off a nasty email naming some of our sport’s greatest heros, first ask yourself this: Outside of your biking buddies, would anyone else know who you are talking about? Would it be the equivalent of discussing Lance, Floyd, Earnhardt, or Jeff Gordon at a bar? Is it likely we’ll see said mountain bike champ on a box of Wheeties or on the cover of the sports page tomorrow morning? Will race coverage headline this evening’s edition of Sportscenter? Don’t answer any of that- I’m afraid we already know the truth.

The sport of professional mountain bike racing needs an image facelift, a bit of promotion, and a character or ambassador to reach out to the public’s awareness. It becomes immediately overwhelming once the process is considered, but then when compared to other forms of successful competition our sport is really not at any major disadvantage.

Are the races coming to your town? Perhaps firing of letters to the local newspapers, and television stations expressing your desire for media coverage isn’t such a bad idea. To the younger individuals; report the results in your school’s newspaper or even just email them to a few of your buddies. The point is that fans of our sport must unite if we expect there to be changes. There is power in numbers and each of us has the ability to spread the word, if even only to a few at a time.

Perhaps one day we’ll be able to participate in public debate as to who is going to win the NORBA series next year or which bicycle manufacturer has the edge and not have people look at us like we’re speaking another language.